Meet Rachel Finney, CEO of Captial Area Humane Society

Saturday

Nov 21, 2015 at 12:01 AMNov 22, 2015 at 10:06 AM

Rachel Finney was motivated by personal passion when she became involved in the nonprofit sector as a student at Indiana University. Finney founded Life Goes On, an organ-and tissue-donation organization. It was her response to watching a dear friend fight a losing battle with cystic fibrosis.

Rachel Finney was motivated by personal passion when she became involved in the nonprofit sector as a student at Indiana University. Finney founded Life Goes On, an organ-and tissue-donation organization. It was her response to watching a dear friend fight a losing battle with cystic fibrosis.

The experience led her to study nonprofit management. Before she graduated, Life Goes On had registered 10,000 organ donors and had begun operating on 15 college campuses.

As a new board member for Lifeline of Ohio, Finney remains passionate about organ and tissue donation. But over the past decade, she’s applied her professional talents to animal-welfare organizations.

While Finney was serving as vice president of programs for Junior Achievement of Central Ohio and living in Marysville, she visited the Union County Humane Society. She found the shelter in serious disrepair. Finney joined the board, was appointed the organization’s first executive director and, over five years, turned the shelter around.

Upon seeing Finney’s success in Union County, the Capital Area Humane Society recruited her as operations chief in 2008. Finney saw the offer to manage CAHS as a “huge opportunity” to apply her talents to a much larger organization serving roughly 10 times as many animals.

“I am not a maintainer. If something’s working well, if there’s a good process in place, if it doesn’t need significant improvement, it’s hard for me to stay engaged and motivated at the same level,” said Finney.

In 2012, Finney was named executive director at CAHS. She has implemented a “ReVision” program that has reduced cat euthanasia at CAHS by 75 percent. The placement rate for dogs has risen from roughly 70 percent to between 80 and 90 percent under her leadership. Under her direction, CAHS has finished the past three years in the black.

Finney was voted the 2015 CEO of the Year in the Small Nonprofit category by participants in the Central Ohio CEO Survey, conducted by the Capital University School of Management and Leadership in partnership with Columbus CEO magazine. Finney spoke with Columbus CEO about CAHS and the qualities a leader needs to channel passions into successful nonprofits.

Q: As a new board member, what did it take for you to push for change at the Union County shelter?

A: You certainly need to feel passion for the mission, that’s obvious. You need to be able to articulate your passion. You need to be able to convey it easily to others so they can absorb it and have it grow. It was (about) helping them to get from that mostly volunteer mentality to formalize the process, and to inspire the passion that got them involved in the first place.

At that time, 12 board members were managing the staff, and they all had different opinions and perspectives. Just being the one person to glue it all together was critical.

We saw significant turnover in the board in the first two years, and it was healthy, it was good. We were able to put into place some really progressive programs. We got the live release up. It looked good, it smelled good, the animals felt good, we had a volunteer program in place.

Q: What was the biggest lesson you took from that experience?

A: Passion, enthusiasm for the mission, is nowhere near enough. You really need to harness the energies and the passion of everyone involved and then focus it.

Q: What’s on your to-do list at CAHS?

A: We have to spend a lot of time and resources investing in our inner-bench and making sure that we’re training the next generation of leaders here.

For many years, we were focused on what’s happening today. … Thankfully, we’re out of survival mode and getting into thriving. To me, that means: What are the steps we’re taking to make sure we’r e successful next week and next month and five years from now?

Q: What would you say is the most-rewarding part of your job?

A: My favorite thing is the view from my office. When you see, particularly kids, skipping to their car with their new pet, it’s bliss.

We see a lot of broken: the relationships between people and pets, or the relationships between people, and what (can happen) when it goes wrong. It’s that harmony when people and pets are living in balance and when you see that, it is so pure and so good that it quiets the rest of it.